Predictably, but nonetheless amusingly, nominal supporter of gay and lesbian rights and very sincere utter Republican hack Glenn Reynolds asserts that the repeal of DADT — supported by every Demcorat who voted in the Senate and opposed by the vast majority of Republicans — was “bipartisan,” while the DADT policy was entirely the responsibility of Bill Clinton. Right. But, in fairness, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate supported progress, didn’t he? He certainly wouldn’t spend the historic the day in the Senate unleashing a bizarre, hateful series of angry non-sequiturs, would he?

Saturday’s debate on the repeal of the “don’t-ask-don’t-tell” policy was only half an hour old when the Arizona Republican burst onto the floor from the cloakroom, hiked up his pants and stalked over to his friend Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). Ignoring Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), who had the floor, McCain hectored the men noisily for a few moments, waving his arms for emphasis.
[…]

He bemoaned “this bizarro world that the majority leader has been carrying us in,” and taunted: “Maybe it will require another election.” The Arizonan suggested those who vote to repeal would have blood on their hands. “Don’t think that it won’t be at great cost,” he said, punctuating his words by bouncing on his toes and chopping with his left hand. It will “probably,” he said, “harm the battle effectiveness which is so vital to the survival of our young men and women in the military.”

[…]
The loss of Republican votes, no doubt, made McCain even angrier. When it came time for his closing argument before the day’s key vote, McCain spoke for only a few seconds: “Today’s a very sad day. The commandant of the United States Marine Corps says when your life hangs on the line, you don’t want anything distracting. . . . I don’t want to permit that opportunity to happen and I’ll tell you why. You go up to Bethesda Naval Hospital, Marines are up there with no legs, none. You’ve got Marines at Walter Reed with no limbs.”

What a bullet this country dodged in 2008. Frankly, I’m not sure he was even the best candidate on his party’s ticket at this point…

Me personally, I saw some good stuff — down to yesterday — happening because a certain party and person won and that even a respectable member of the opposite party would support many things, down to judicial nominations, that would go against what I support. Thus, it isn’t almost entirely about McCain/Palin for me.

Of course, Donald has never required much in the way of stimulus in order to achieve apoplectic incoherent fits of bigotry. He’s sort of a wingnut berserker, but that doesn’t make him less any less ridiculous.

‎”Woods said “it hurts” McCain to vote against legislation like the DREAM Act after years of working on reform but said the senator felt betrayed when Latinos overwhelmingly supported Obama overwhelmingly in 2008.”

Its not his fault he’s a bigot! Its the damn Latinos who didn’t vote for him – after he disowned his entire legislative record on immigration reform to win the primary.

…while the DADT policy was entirely the responsibility of Bill Clinton.

Greenwald erroneously refers to DADT as a “law,” when it was nothing more than a policy (promulgated by Executive Order) meant to limit the effect of the vile underlying law, 10 U.S.C. § 654. While it’s not clear that an EO has any binding authority on an agency such as DoD (beyond political fallout), Clinton’s DADT policy likely reduced the harm that § 654 could have otherwise caused.

But then I suppose Greenwald’s never been one to let facts get in the way of a baseless political attack.

@ The Original David: Don’t be an idiot. DADT repeal is politically correct, and lots of active duty personnel report likely negative impacts on both military effectiveness and social cohesion in the armed forces. Eros has long been considered a negative distraction from the combat mission. Besides, the post you cite is not critical. It’s the renewed gay rights extremism that’s even more threatening. See, ‘Gay Rights Militants to Push for Same-Sex Marriage Following DADT Victory’.

So your rationale for keeping DADT (or even going back to straight-up “we’ll investigate you if we even think you’re gay”) is “We can’t give these people an inch because they’ll take a mile”? Interesting, as is the blithe, goes-without-saying assumption that same-sex marriage is evil and awful.

Aggressive lobbying for it would be basically helping the other side, and I draw the line at gay marriage, which is against both nature and moral right.

Gay marriage is against nature, whereas monogamy isn’t. Granted, I wrote a dissertation about evolutionary theory, but this whole “marriage is nature” argument has been pretty much ridiculed since the 1890s … not that Douglas would hold truck with an evolutionary argument, mind you.

Also sort of ignores the fact that same sex sexuality has been documented for pretty much every animal species, from ants to elephants, where we have sufficient data. Among naturally monogamous species (of which humans are not one) like penguins and swans, we also have documented cases of same sex pair bonds. What is against nature is sanctimonious idiots like the Donalde.

This is neither the time nor place to have this discussion, lest we arm The Donalde with facts for his third-witted mind to twist, but the case for the existence of human-like homosexuality in nature is actually pretty thin: you have same-sex pair-bonded couples on the one hand, and sexual acts committed between animals of the same sex on the other. However, there’s little evidence that the pair-bonded couples engage in same-sex acts, and none of them naturally enjoy tax breaks or visitation rights, of course.

This presumes that we can adequately define what exactly “human-like homosexuality” even is. I am increasingly of the opinion that the very ideas of homosexuality/heterosexuality obscure the underlying nature of human sexuality (and is itself a fairly recent distinction). It is quite clear that long term pair bonding is not a natural phenomenon in humans (though short term pair bonding may be).

Well, never mind that: is he saying that soldiers aren’t supposed to think of the girls they left behind them? That you’re not supposed to think of yourself as standing between the loved ones at home and the war’s desolation?

[…] still never been to a Georgetown cocktail party, though I have been to many tailgate parties. I also sign off on what Scott said here: What a bullet this country dodged in 2008. Frankly, I’m not sure he was even the best candidate […]